Ive always thought both their techs are equal in ways. With both having plus and minuses against each other. So I would just assume its up to the actual captain of the ship to determine the outcome of the battle. Where if Kirk went up against an Imperial Star Detroyer Clone Captain, Kirk might win. But if Kirk went up against a Jedi, I would think the Jedi would have the upper hand due to precognition and the force in general

Dayum... no wonder Jabba got a hot and bothered about the Princess, she was part Hut after all.

In all seriousness though for us 70's/80's fanboys, Carrie has made a slight comeback from letting herself go a few years ago thanks in part to some good docs I think... we all get old... except Stevie Nicks apparently....

Stevie, a Carrie Fisher CLONE (get it) in 1977... Stevie Nicks in her 60's is the best you can hope for really. And she fell off the weight wagon in the 90's too...

Was going to say this. The fighter/carrier model in space makes about as much sense as a surface ship serving as a carrier for torpedo boats or a transport plane launching fighters. Less sense, actually, as the fighters wouldn't be any faster than their mothership, and only very slightly more maneuverable.

Actually I'm pretty sure the transport planes launching fighters is a very real likelihood for the future of the Air Force drone programs. Small, fast, super agile and disposable drones shred current fighters in simulation scenarios with no loss of life on the drone using side (minimal loss if you lose the transport).

It only really worked in the BSG universe, since they were still using projectile weapons and the idea was that the two ships of the line would try to duke it out, at the same time of setting up defense bombardment perimeters to take out incoming missiles and other craft. The fighters were small enough and maneuverable enough to get through the wall put down and eventually take out the defensive capabilities to allow the ships offensive weapons free reign.

That works in space and at that technology level.

Star Wars just never bothered with that kind of logical planning. If we go by the Nerd-o-sphere canon on the empires ships stats, there's not a chance in hell even a jedi rebel force would be able to take on the empire. If we went by what we saw in the movies, the ships and equipment of the empire is woefully vulnerable and ineffective against any and all threats... with the odd ability of the deathstar being able to produce the energy needed to destroy a planetary body.

Anyways, If they did something it was for cinematography or to move the plot along. It's too contradictory otherwise. Lucas could give a flying crap about science fiction as long as it looked awesome and moved the story in his eyes, he's always said as much. He doesn't even believe SW is science fiction. Any canon'ing of SW is just a fan service to sell more merch.

the whole problem with all the Sci Fi battles, with the notable exception of the Wrath of Khan:

its all ww2 in space. or even earlier. star wars IV death star attack was total ww2 in space. hell, the fleet battles in the prequels were even earlier, it was broadsides of cannons at point blank range a la 19th century naval warfare. it was trafalgar in sapce, not even midway.

BSG was ww2 as well.

one can only assume that the sensors and reach of weapons between starships would be so vast the ships would never see one another, more like how if missile destroyers fought other missile destroyers now.

but that, alas, is bad eye candy and no fun to watch.

i mean CMON the Pegasus Death March in BSG? how freakin' epic was that shiat?

Was going to say this. The fighter/carrier model in space makes about as much sense as a surface ship serving as a carrier for torpedo boats or a transport plane launching fighters. Less sense, actually, as the fighters wouldn't be any faster than their mothership, and only very slightly more maneuverable.

Actually I'm pretty sure the transport planes launching fighters is a very real likelihood for the future of the Air Force drone programs. Small, fast, super agile and disposable drones shred current fighters in simulation scenarios with no loss of life on the drone using side (minimal loss if you lose the transport).

It only really worked in the BSG universe, since they were still using projectile weapons and the idea was that the two ships of the line would try to duke it out, at the same time of setting up defense bombardment perimeters to take out incoming missiles and other craft. The fighters were small enough and maneuverable enough to get through the wall put down and eventually take out the defensive capabilities to allow the ships offensive weapons free reign.

That works in space and at that technology level.

Star Wars just never bothered with that kind of logical planning. If we go by the Nerd-o-sphere canon on the empires ships stats, there's not a chance in hell even a jedi rebel force would be able to take on the empire. If we went by what we saw in the movies, the ships and equipment of the empire is woefully vulnerable and ineffective against any and all threats... with the odd ability of the deathstar being able to produce the energy needed to destroy a planetary body.

Anyways, If they did something it was for cinematography or to move the plot along. It's too contradictory otherwise. Lucas could give a flying crap about science fiction as long as it looked awesome and moved the story in his eyes, he's always said as much. He doesn't even believe SW is science fiction. Any canon'ing of SW is just a fan service to sell more merch.

You would think they could at least throw up some plywood or something.

And let me point out that turbolaser bolts can obliterate small asteroids, and it has been calculated that a single Star Destroyer turbolaser bolt has about the same output as the bomb that took out Hiroshima.source

3. Star Destroyers DO have deflector shields that are at least as powerful as those on Galaxy-class ship from Star Trek.

5. A Star Destroyer has more than just one guy manning the weapons console, too. They have an entire crew (37,085) that is dedicated to the operation of the ship, and a good chunk of that crew is actually manning weapons bays and consoles. They're assisted by targeting computers, but since the Star Destroyer has at least 64 heavy weapons emplacements on the top, bottom, sides, front and back of the ship, they've got a distinct need for more than just one fellow firing the one main gun, as in a Galaxy-class ship.

This is no contest. The Enterprise has been shown to be incapable of even destroying a single small asteroid. A Star Destroyer has been shown blasting asteroids into dust with minimal effort.

The ONLY advantage the Galaxy-class ship has over the Star Destroyer is transporter technology, which any Trek fan knows is baffled by shields; If either ship has shields up, it won't work. I guarantee you the Imperials aren't going to drop their shields, and even if they did, beaming a proton torpedo onto their bridge wouldn't stop them. Why? There are auxiliary command posts, for one, and a Star Destroyer doesn't put all its most important equipment and personnel in just one place on the ship.

On top of that, these things have TEN tractor beam projectors, and two large docking clamps/claws that are used to capture ships a lot bigger than a Galaxy-class starship.

In truth, I doubt a Galaxy-class starship could stand up to a Corellian CR90 corvette, much less an Imperial Star Destroyer.

1) Star Destroyers do have shields2) They don't use actual lasers3) Trek has never used the transporter as a weapon as they could have easily done, especially with those Borg ships that let them beam in and out at will

/end geek rant

Regarding 3, I think that's mostly for the sake of the plot. Meet borg ship, beam anti-matter bomb next to a power-core. +1 win for the good-guys. When you think about it, accurate mapless teleporters like they use in Star Trek would actually be some of the most terrifyingly destructive weapons imaginable. You wouldn't even need to teleport bombs necessarily; their teleporters have a built in subroutine that removes pathogens and foreign bodies from those transported by them. This means you can rather precisely edit the molecular composition of any object being transported. In other words, you could take a chuck of uranium, load it into the buffer, edit out a few choice electrons, then teleport it into the center of a major city and, when it re-materializes, it will immediately fiss, causing an atomic explosion. You could also take a container holding matter and anti-matter separated by a divider, load it into the buffer, remove the divider's pattern, teleport the rest, and create even greater devastation.

And imagine how easy it would make sabotage. All you need to teleport anything up to the ship is a transmitter small enough that it fits into a shirt pin beside a near-perfect communications device and computer terminal. Using holographic projection, you could make a crew member look like a janitor or low level tech, send him into a power plant, place such a transmitter on an important part of the coolant system, then teleport it up at your leisure, causing a meltdown. One would imagine practically everything of any import would be heavily shielded in the Trekverse just to prevent this sort of asymmetrical transporter warfare.

And let me point out that turbolaser bolts can obliterate small asteroids, and it has been calculated that a single Star Destroyer turbolaser bolt has about the same output as the bomb that took out Hiroshima.source

3. Star Destroyers DO have deflector shields that are at least as powerful as those on Galaxy-class ship from Star Trek.

5. A Star Destroyer has more than just one guy manning the weapons console, too. They have an entire crew (37,085) that is dedicated to the operation of the ship, and a good chunk of that crew is actually manning weapons bays and consoles. They're assisted by targeting computers, but since the Star Destroyer has at least 64 heavy weapons emplacements on the top, bottom, sides, front and back of the ship, they've got a distinct need for more than just one fellow firing the one main gun, as in a Galaxy-class ship.

This is no contest. The Enterprise has been shown to be incapable of even destroying a single small asteroid. A Star Destroyer has been shown blasting asteroids into dust with minimal effort.

The ONLY advantage the Galaxy-class ship has over the Star Destroyer is transporter technology, which any Trek fan knows is baffled by shields; If either ship has shields up, it won't work. I guarantee you the Imperials aren't going to drop their shields, and even if they did, beaming a proton torpedo onto their bridge wouldn't stop them. Why? There are auxiliary command posts, for one, and a Star Destroyer doesn't put all its most important equipment and personnel in just one place on the ship.

On top of that, these things have TEN tractor beam projectors, and two large docking clamps/claws that are used to capture ships a lot bigger than a Galaxy-class starship.

In truth, I doubt a Galaxy-class starship could stand up to a Corellian CR90 corvette, much less an Imperial Star Destroyer.

Not to mention The Jedi Knight series, the KOTOR series, and the upcoming MMORPG (which sounds promising).

They just can't make a good ST game it seems.

/Of course, it helps that Lucas has his own gaming company.

Trek has some pretty good tactical rpgs, fps's, and rts's from, though to be honest I've spent far more time zooming around in a tie-fighter blasting mine fields and rebel smugglers than I did shooting phasers at Romulans.

And let me point out that turbolaser bolts can obliterate small asteroids, and it has been calculated that a single Star Destroyer turbolaser bolt has about the same output as the bomb that took out Hiroshima.source

3. Star Destroyers DO have deflector shields that are at least as powerful as those on Galaxy-class ship from Star Trek.

5. A Star Destroyer has more than just one guy manning the weapons console, too. They have an entire crew (37,085) that is dedicated to the operation of the ship, and a good chunk of that crew is actually manning weapons bays and consoles. They're assisted by targeting computers, but since the Star Destroyer has at least 64 heavy weapons emplacements on the top, bottom, sides, front and back of the ship, they've got a distinct need for more than just one fellow firing the one main gun, as in a Galaxy-class ship.

This is no contest. The Enterprise has been shown to be incapable of even destroying a single small asteroid. A Star Destroyer has been shown blasting asteroids into dust with minimal effort.

The ONLY advantage the Galaxy-class ship has over the Star Destroyer is transporter technology, which any Trek fan knows is baffled by shields; If either ship has shields up, it won't work. I guarantee you the Imperials aren't going to drop their shields, and even if they did, beaming a proton torpedo onto their bridge wouldn't stop them. Why? There are auxiliary command posts, for one, and a Star Destroyer doesn't put all its most important equipment and personnel in just one place on the ship.

On top of that, these things have TEN tractor beam projectors, and two large docking clamps/claws that are used to capture ships a lot bigger than a Galaxy-class starship.

In truth, I doubt a Galaxy-class starship could stand up to a Corellian CR90 corvette, much less an Imperial Star Destroyer.

I bet you've never kissed a girl.[images2.wikia.nocookie.net image 180x135]

Who knows how their shields would interact with teleporter tech, though. ST shields work as a wide-spectrum radiation buffer, absorbing the brunt of an attack to lessen its impact on the shielded object. SW shields, on the other hand, absorb all incoming dmg at 100% until they run out of "hit points" at which point they fail and the shielded object becomes vulnerable to damage. It may be that such shields wouldn't create enough interference to make transportation impossible, or that they could be "whittled down" to a point where teleportation was feasible.

Furthermore, there's the question of the relative strength of the two shielding systems. You point out that SW turbolasers can pulverize small asteroids; well, so do ST shield systems. In fact, ST ships have an entirely different, secondary and always active shield system -the deflector dish- that is dedicated to doing precisely this; atomizing any small object they run into. It may be that the relative power of SW lasers is not even enough to puncture the deflector shield of your typical ST ship, let alone reduce the strength of the martial shield array. In comparison, SW shields are so useless against asteroids that star destroyers have to actually destroy them to avoid being scuttled by impacts. ST martial shields can take a handful of direct hits from photon-torpedoes; a munition so powerful that Federation officers view Hiroshima-level warheads as little more than children's toys. It's hard to imagine a SW shield system -which can barely take a single asteroid collision- standing up to such a device.

As to the question of redundancies in SW ships, I don't think that's not as clear cut as you make it. While the EU stuff might make a big deal about them, in the actual films we regularly see Star Destroyers "sink" because their main bridge has been destroyed, and the point is made over and over that the Imperial hierarchy is so rigid that, without adequate commanding officers, the Imperial military is rather pathetic. In comparison, we see the secondary command deck used in various ST episodes, and we are constantly reminded that individual initiative and free-thinking are traits actively inculcated in Federation command staff. Indeed, not only do we persistently see commanders encouraging their underlings to take risks, act on their own initiative, and offer constructive contradictions and suggestions, but numerous episodes in TNG, DS:9, and Voyager revolve around the significant time and effort the Federation puts in to redundancy training for Command Staff. Everyone from the 2nd officer to the ship psychologist are prepared, at a moments notice, to step up and assume command of the Enterprise, and we see each do so successfully in at least one episode. As such, it seems save to assume that, while Imperial ships would likely collapse upon the death of the command crew, Federation crews would be far more resilient and resourceful.

Of course, all of this is just navel gazing regarding stuff that doesn't, and probable never will, exist, but it's fun to think about.

Heron:Furthermore, there's the question of the relative strength of the two shielding systems. You point out that SW turbolasers can pulverize small asteroids; well, so do ST shield systems. In fact, ST ships have an entirely different, secondary and always active shield system -the deflector dish- that is dedicated to doing precisely this; atomizing any small object they run into. It may be that the relative power of SW lasers is not even enough to puncture the deflector shield of your typical ST ship, let alone reduce the strength of the martial shield array. In comparison, SW shields are so useless against asteroids that star destroyers have to actually destroy them to avoid being scuttled by impacts. ST martial shields can take a handful of direct hits from photon-torpedoes; a munition so powerful that Federation officers view Hiroshima-level warheads as little more than children's toys. It's hard to imagine a SW shield system -which can barely take a single asteroid collision- standing up to such a device.

Time to show my nerd side for a moment: In the TNG episode "The Outrageous Okona" (an episode that felt like a Han Solo parody), the Enterprise is fired upon by ships using weaponized lasers. Yet, said lasers were noted as not even having any effect on the basic navigational shields (that even shuttle craft have) let alone the real shields.

Also, in TOS, Kirk did one of his pontifications about how the old Enterprise carried the power to destroy entire worlds (as cold war allegory). So, even an old rattle-trap like TOS Enterprise had the power to match SW's moon sized Deathstar.

On a side note for previous discussion, Voyager had the situation where the teleporter had a setting allowing for the whole crew of a ship to do a point-to-point emergency transport from one ship to another, a planet or whatever. One of the times the ship was "stolen" was done in this method and, I think, was used to save the generation ship Klingons when their religious thing metastasized.

Angry Buddha:PsiChick: (I'm sorry, but if you hear your enemy say "No, I am your father", and you do not automatically think "I want a paternity test", you are not the sharpest spoon in the drawer.)

I love delving into the real and imagined back-stories of stuff like this. Seriously. But I think you're off target.

When Vader dropped the Maury Bomb on Luke, he told him to "search his feelings" or whatever. I think The Force enabled Luke to see the truth of it regardless of his initial skepticism (which he did display along with shock and horror).

The Sith control the Force, remember? So Vader could have lied, and Luke would never have known. Since I assume Yoda taught him this at some point, to automatically believe something an enemy said that shows every hallmark of being nothing more than a distraction, to the point where said distraction works, means you're an idiot. You just can't rely on a method of lie detection if your enemy has both motive and opportunity to cheat it.

/This is also why I think Obi-Wan was so surprised when Yoda said Leia was their second hope...Leia, being smarter, was the more dangerous choice, because if it came down to it, they had no way of controlling her if she went rogue.

PsiChick:/This is also why I think Obi-Wan was so surprised when Yoda said Leia was their second hope...Leia, being smarter, was the more dangerous choice, because if it came down to it, they had no way of controlling her if she went rogue.

...Which is also why Obiwan is retarded. Why didn't he know about Leia? He was there when she was born. He was there when Oregano and Sipowicz took her back to the station on Alderan. What, was his ghost having a senior moment?

Publikwerks:PsiChick: /This is also why I think Obi-Wan was so surprised when Yoda said Leia was their second hope...Leia, being smarter, was the more dangerous choice, because if it came down to it, they had no way of controlling her if she went rogue.

...Which is also why Obiwan is retarded. Why didn't he know about Leia? He was there when she was born. He was there when Oregano and Sipowicz took her back to the station on Alderan. What, was his ghost having a senior moment?

That's why I said he probably did know--he was surprised that Yoda thought Leia was stable enough to be considered option B. After all, the last thing anyone needs is for Vader to have a surprise apprentice handed to him on a silver platter...

/Am I the only one who thinks that would actually have been totally freaking awesome?

What? Nothing about the concept of taking Storm Troopers who can't hit the broad side of a barn against Red Shirts who die at the first sign of trouble?

I remember an OLD piece of fan fiction that resolved the issue by having the Darth Vader type character drop a baby grand piano on the red shirts after they were stuck in a Mexican Standoff with the Storm Troopers.